Monday, June 8, 2015

In my review of A Horrible Way to Die, I suggested that movie may actually be about the death of a culture. The same is true of Blue Ruin, another violent film about dysfunction, grief, and death. Blue Ruin is a crime drama, not a horror film, but the films are cousins.

Speaking of cousins, Blue Ruin is another film about hillbillies. I suspect that such films are part of our attempt to come to grips that white people have their cultures, too, and we tend to cling to them with the same morbid pride as anyone else. The title presumably refers to the main character's car, but it also describes the man, and maybe the Blue Ridge Mountains, at or near where the movie was filmed.

I haven't seen The World Made Straight, which is set in an Appalachian town still haunted by a Civil War massacre, nor Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, a horror-comedy that reverses stereotypes. For a history lesson, there's the modest but sincere Chris Cooper film Pharaoh's Army, set in Civil War-era Kentucky. Blue Ruin is probably a notch down from the high-water Winter's Bone, but it's still a good film.

** moderate spoilers ahead **

The protagonist is Dwight, whose parents were killed when he was a kid. He's never recovered. At one point, his sister says that she could forgive him if he were sick, "but you're not sick, you're weak." If you discuss the film after, you'll be discussing whether you agree with her or not.

Like The Brave One, Blue Ruin attempts to show us what Batman would be like if he were a real person: he'd be a mess, even more of a mess than Nolan's Dark Knight.

EDIT, 21 March 2016: I eventually realized, the film can also be compared to Hamlet. Further, the word "hamlet" can refer to a small settlement of under 100 people, and is sometimes used of the Appalachians. The common factor: modernity is leagues away.